Explore the vast range of titles available.

Lateral submesoscale processes and their influence on vertical stratification at shallow salinity fronts in the central Bay of Bengal during the winter monsoon are explored using high-resolution data from a cruise in November 2013. The observations are from a radiator survey centered at a salinity-controlled density front, embedded in a zone of moderate mesoscale strain (0.15 times the Coriolis parameter) and forced by winds with a downfront orientation. Below a thin mixed layer, often ≤10 m, the analysis shows several dynamical signatures indicative of submesoscale processes: (i) negative Ertel potential vorticity (PV); (ii) low-PV anomalies with O (1–10) km lateral extent, where the vorticity estimated on isopycnals and the isopycnal thickness are tightly coupled, varying in lockstep to yield low PV; (iii) flow conditions susceptible to forced symmetric instability (FSI) or bearing the imprint of earlier FSI events; (iv) negative lateral gradients in the absolute momentum field (inertial instability); and (v) strong contribution from differential sheared advection at O (1) km scales to the growth rate of the depth-averaged stratification. The findings here show one-dimensional vertical processes alone cannot explain the vertical stratification and its lateral variability over O (1–10) km scales at the radiator survey.

Based on high-resolution turbulence microstructure and near-surface velocity data, frontal instability and its relation to turbulence are investigated inside a transient upwelling filament in the Benguela upwelling system (southeast Atlantic). The focus of our study is a sharp submesoscale front located at the edge of the filament, characterized by persistent downfront winds, a strong frontal jet, and vigorous turbulence. Our analysis reveals three distinct frontal stability regimes. (i) On the light side of the front, a 30–40-m-deep turbulent surface layer with low potential vorticity (PV) was identified. This low-PV region exhibited a well-defined two-layer structure with a convective (Ekman-forced) upper layer and a stably stratified lower layer, where turbulence was driven by forced symmetric instability (FSI). Dissipation rates in this region scaled with the Ekman buoyancy flux, in excellent quantitative agreement with recent numerical simulations of FSI. (ii) Inside the cyclonic flank of the frontal jet, near the maximum of the cross-front density gradient, the cyclonic vorticity was sufficiently strong to suppress FSI. Turbulence in this region was driven by marginal shear instability. (iii) Inside the anticyclonic flank of the frontal jet, conditions for mixed inertial/symmetric instability were satisfied. Our data provide direct evidence for the relevance of FSI, inertial instability, and marginal shear instability for overall kinetic energy dissipation in submesoscale fronts and filaments.

Recent studies suggest linkages between anomalously warm temperatures in the winter stratosphere, and the high-latitude summer mesopause. The summer temperature anomaly is manifested in the decline of polar mesospheric clouds. The 2-day wave is a strong-amplitude and transient summer feature that interacts with the background state so as to warm the high-latitude summer mesopause. This wave has been linked to a low-latitude phenomenon called inertial instability, which is organized by breaking planetary waves in the winter stratosphere. Hence, inertial instability has been identified as a possible nexus between the disturbed winter stratosphere, and summer mesopause warming. We investigate a sustained occurrence of inertial instability during 19 July–8 August 2014. During this period, stratospheric winter temperatures warmed by about 10 K, while a steep decline in polar mesospheric clouds was reported between 26 July and 6 August. We present, for the first time, wave driving associated with observed inertial instability. The effect of inertial instability is to export eastward momentum from the winter hemisphere across the equator into the summer hemisphere. Using a primitive equation model, we demonstrate that the wave stresses destabilize the stratopause summer easterly jet. The reconfigured wind profile excites the wavenumber-4 component of the 2-day wave, leading to enhanced warming of the summer mesopause. This work supports previous numerical investigations that identified planetary wave–driven inertial instability as a source of the 2-day wave.

Based on multiple sources of atmospheric and oceanic data, this study performs a series of composite analysis of the South Asian summer monsoon (SASM) onset against ENSO events, and indicates that warm/cold ENSO events induce later/earlier onset of the SASM by modulating the vertical coupling of the upper- and lower-level circulation over the South Asia. Specifically, during the monsoon onset of Bay of Bengal (BOB), the ENSO-induced convection anomalies over the southern Philippines can modulate the position of South Asian high (SAH) in late April in the upper troposphere, which evolves to affect the monsoon onset convection by changing the upper divergence-pumping effect. In the lower troposphere, ENSO induces an anomalous zonal gradient of sea surface temperature (SST) over the Indian-western Pacific Ocean to alter the barotropic instability which further affects the formation of BOB monsoon onset convection. During the Indian summer monsoon onset, the anomalous convection over northeastern BOB and Indochina Peninsula in late May act to change the SAH position and its relevant upper divergence-pumping over the Arabian Sea (AS). Meanwhile, the Indian monsoon onset convection is also modulated by the ENSO-induced changes in intensity of the inertial instability and the forced convection over the AS, which are related to an ENSO-induced anomalous cross-equatorial SST gradient and zonally asymmetric meridional gradient of sea level pressure, and an anomalous westerly over the central AS in the lower troposphere. Results demonstrate that during the BOB and India monsoon onset, the influences of ENSO on the upper circulation are similar, but are distinctly different on the lower-level circulation.

On 13 November 2019, seven commercial aircraft of China Eastern Airlines encountered nine severe-or-greater clear-air turbulence (CAT) events over central and eastern China within 12 h (0000–1200 UTC). These events mainly occurred at altitudes between 6.0 and 6.7 km. A high-resolution nested numerical simulation is carried out using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model to investigate the generation mechanism of these CAT events, with a horizontal resolution of 1 km over the inner domain. In addition, seven CAT diagnostics with outstanding performances are employed for the mechanism analysis. The WRF Model can reasonably reproduce both synoptic-scale systems (Siberian high and upper-level jet stream) and local vertical structures (temperature, dewpoint temperature, and wind field). The simulation indicates that an upper-level front–jet system with a remarkable meridional temperature gradient intensifies over central and eastern China, with the maximum wind speed increasing from 59.0 to 67.3 m s −1 . The intensification of the front–jet system induces the tropopause folding, and nine localized CAT events occur in the region with large vertical wind shear (VWS) (1.55 × 10 −2 –2.53 × 10 −2 s −1 ) and small Richardson numbers (Ri) (0.42–0.85) below the cyclonic side of the jet stream. Diagnostic analysis reveals that Kelvin–Helmholtz instability plays an important role in CAT generation, while convective and inertial instability is not directly associated with CAT generation in this study. A typical flight case with continuous CAT events also suggests that large VWS (greater than 1.3 × 10 −2 s −1 ) accompanied with small Ri (less than 1) favors CAT generation in a front–jet system environment.

Idealized numerical simulations of the Kuroshio western boundary current flowing over the Hirase seamount were conducted to examine the mechanisms of phenomena observed by shipboard and mooring measurements. Along the Kuroshio, enhanced mixing [vertical diffusivity, K ρ = O (10 −2 ) m 2 s −1 ] was observed in a low-stratification layer between high-shear layers around low tide, and a V-shaped band of the negative vertical component of relative vorticity ( ζ z ) was also observed. Those features were reproduced in simulations of the Kuroshio that included the D2 tide. In the simulation, a streak of negative ζ z detached from the Hirase turned into vertically tilted 10-km-scale vortices. The buoyancy frequency squared ( N 2 ) budget at the mooring position showed that the low stratification was caused by vertical and horizontal advection and horizontal tilting. The K ρ tended to increase when the Ertel potential vorticity (PV) < 0, as expected given the inertial instability. However, the magnitude of K ρ also depended on the tidal phase near Hirase, and K ρ was increased in the high vertical shear zones at the periphery of vortices where a strain motion is large. These results indicate that not only inertial instability but also tidal and vertical shear effects are important for driving turbulent mixing.

A new coupled model is developed to investigate interactions among geostrophic, Ekman, and near-inertial (NI) flows. The model couples a time-dependent nonlinear slab Ekman layer with a two-layer shallow water model. Wind stress forces the slab layer and horizontal divergence of slab-layer transport appears as a forcing in the continuity equation of the shallow water model. In one version of the slab model, self-advection of slab-layer momentum is retained and in another it is not. The most obvious impact of this explicit representation of the surface-layer dynamics is in the high-frequency part of the flow. For example, near-inertial oscillations are significantly stronger when self-advection of slab-layer momentum is retained, this being true both for the slab-layer flow itself and for the interior flow that it excites. In addition, retaining the self-advection terms leads to a new instability, which causes growth of slab-layer near-inertial oscillations in regions of anticyclonic forcing and decay in regions of cyclonic forcing. In contrast to inertial instability, it is the sign of the forcing, not that of the underlying vorticity, that determines stability. High-passed surface pressure fields are also examined and show the surface signature of unbalanced flow to differ substantially depending on whether a slab-layer model is used and, if so, whether self-advection of slab-layer momentum is retained.

Gravity waves are important drivers of dynamic processes in particular in the middle atmosphere. To analyse atmospheric data for gravity wave signals, it is essential to separate gravity wave perturbations from atmospheric variability due to other dynamic processes. Common methods to separate small-scale gravity wave signals from a large-scale background are separation methods depending on filters in either the horizontal or vertical wavelength domain. However, gravity waves are not the only process that could lead to small-scale perturbations in the atmosphere. Recently, concerns have been raised that vertical wavelength filtering can lead to misinterpretation of other wave-like perturbations, such as inertial instability effects, as gravity wave perturbations. In this paper we assess the ability of different spectral background removal approaches to separate gravity waves and inertial instabilities using artificial inertial instability perturbations, global model data and satellite observations. We investigate a horizontal background removal (which applies a zonal wavenumber filter with additional smoothing of the spectral components in meridional and vertical direction), a sophisticated filter based on 2D time–longitude spectral analysis (see Ern et al., 2011) and a vertical wavelength Butterworth filter. Critical thresholds for the vertical wavelength and zonal wavenumber are analysed. Vertical filtering has to cut deep into the gravity wave spectrum in order to remove inertial instability remnants from the perturbations (down to 6 km cutoff wavelength). Horizontal filtering, however, removes inertial instability remnants in global model data at wavenumbers far lower than the typical gravity wave scales for the case we investigated. Specifically, a cutoff zonal wavenumber of 6 in the stratosphere is sufficient to eliminate inertial instability structures. Furthermore, we show that for infrared limb-sounding satellite profiles it is possible as well to effectively separate perturbations of inertial instabilities from those of gravity waves using a cutoff zonal wavenumber of 6. We generalize the findings of our case study by examining a 1-year time series of SABER (Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry) data.

Monsoons emerge over a range of land surface conditions and exhibit varying physical characteristics over the seasonal cycle, from onset to withdrawal. Systematically varying the moisture and albedo parameters over land in an idealized modeling framework allows one to analyze the physics underlying the successive stages of monsoon development. To this end, we implement an isolated South American continent with reduced heat capacity but no topography in an idealized moist general circulation model. Irrespective of the local moisture availability, the seasonal cycles of precipitation and circulation over the South American monsoon sector are distinctly monsoonal with the default surface albedo. The dry land case (zero evaporation) is characterized by a shallow overturning circulation with vigorous lower-tropospheric ascent, transporting water vapor from the ocean. By contrast, with bucket hydrology or unlimited land moisture, the monsoon features deep moist convection that penetrates the upper troposphere. A series of land albedo perturbation experiments indicates that the monsoon strengthens with the net column energy flux and the near-surface moist static energy with all land moisture conditions. When the land–ocean thermal contrast is strong enough, inertial instability alone is sufficient for producing a shallow but vigorous circulation and converging a large amount of moisture from the ocean even in the absence of land moisture. Once the land is sufficiently moist, convective instability takes hold and the shallow circulation deepens. These results have implications for monsoon onset and intensification, and may elucidate the seasonal variations in how surface warming impacts tropical precipitation over land.

The stalling and rapid destruction of a potential vorticity (PV) anomaly in the upper troposphere–lower stratosphere (UTLS) by convectively detrained inertially unstable air is described. On 20 August 2018, 10–15 in. (~0.3–0.4 m) of rain fell on western Dane County, Wisconsin, primarily during 0100–0300 UTC 21 August (1900–2100 CDT 20 August), leading to extreme local flooding. Dynamical aspects are investigated using the University of Wisconsin Nonhydrostratic Modeling System (UWNMS). Results are compared with available radiosonde, radar, total rainfall estimates, satellite infrared, and high-resolution European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) operational analyses. Using ECMWF analyses, the formation of the UTLS PV anomaly is traced to its origin a week earlier in a PV streamer over the west coast of North America. The rainfall maximum over southern Wisconsin was associated with this PV anomaly, whereby convection forming in the warm-upglide sector rotated cyclonically into the region. The quasi-stationarity of this rainfall feature was aided by a broad northeastward surge of inertially unstable convective outflow air into southeastern Wisconsin, which coincided with stalling of the eastward progression of the PV anomaly and its diversion into southern Wisconsin, extending heavy rainfall for several hours. Cessation of rainfall coincided with dilution of the PV maximum in less than an hour (2100–2200 CDT), associated with the arrival of negative PV in the upper troposphere. The region of negative PV was created when convection over Illinois transported air with low wind speed into northeastward shear. This feature is diagnosed using the convective momentum transport hypothesis.